IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/v31y2002i2ps359-71.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Transitions between Property Regimes

Author

Listed:
  • Banner, Stuart

Abstract

What causes a society to reallocate property rights? The canonical explanation is the one offered by Harold Demsetz in "Toward a Theory of Property Rights"--that societies adopt new property regimes when some external shock alters the costs and benefits of an existing regime such that it becomes less efficient than the one that replaces it. As others have noted, however, the Demsetz account fails to specify any mechanism by which the transition can actually occur, and the existence of such a mechanism is not obvious, because the transition is likely to be costly. This paper examines the empirical operation of one such mechanism, used in the massive reallocation of property rights that took place throughout Europe and many of its colonies roughly between 1500 and 1900, in which functionally organized property systems were converted into spatially organized systems. Copyright 2002 by the University of Chicago.

Suggested Citation

  • Banner, Stuart, 2002. "Transitions between Property Regimes," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 359-371, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:31:y:2002:i:2:p:s359-71
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Boyce & David Bruner, 2012. "Property rights out of anarchy? The Demsetz hypothesis in a game of conflict," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 95-120, June.
    2. von Wangenheim Georg, 2011. "Evolutionary Theories in Law and Economics and Their Use for Comparative Legal Theory," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(3), pages 737-765, December.
    3. Mwangi, Esther, 2007. "Subdividing the Commons: Distributional Conflict in the Transition from Collective to Individual Property Rights in Kenya's Maasailand," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 815-834, May.
    4. Annette M. Kim, 2011. "Introduction: Real Rights to the City—Cases of Property Rights Changes towards Equity in Eastern Asia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(3), pages 459-469, February.
    5. Kevin Guerin, 2004. "Theory vs Reality: Making Environmental Use Rights Work in New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/06, New Zealand Treasury.
    6. Beyene, Fekadu, 2010. "Driving forces in the expansion of enclosure among pastoral and agropastoral herders in Ethiopia," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 49(2), pages 1-20.
    7. Edwyna Harris, 2007. "Dams And Disputes: Water Institutions In Colonial New South Wales, Australia, 1850-1870," Monash Economics Working Papers 08-07, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    8. Shenjing He & Yuting Liu & Chris Webster & Fulong Wu, 2009. "Property Rights Redistribution, Entitlement Failure and the Impoverishment of Landless Farmers in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(9), pages 1925-1949, August.
    9. Mwangi, Esther, 2006. "Subdividing the commons: the politics of property rights transformation in Kenya's Maasailand," CAPRi working papers 46, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    10. Livia Navone, 2013. "Property versus political holdouts: the case of the TGV rail line Lyon–Budapest in Italy," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 409-426, June.
    11. Dolejší, David, 2018. "Coproduction of property rights: The management of watercourses in pre-modern Bohemia," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 50-59.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:v:31:y:2002:i:2:p:s359-71. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.